By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The British government’s scheme of secrecy surrounding the public inquiry into the alleged Novichok attacks against Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Dawn Sturgess in 2018 has been opposed by the BBC and the London Times. 

“A requirement for confidentiality undertakings”, a BBC lawyer wrote to the inquiry chairman, Lord Anthony Hughes, in a document released by Hughes’ spokesman last Friday, “is itself an impediment to transparency… as well as general, healthy discourse among legal and editorial colleagues.” David Attfield is the head of the BBC’s programme legal advice department which signed the document.   But the name on the signature line has been blacked out. “The media should be trusted to act responsibly,” the BBC told Hughes.  

In a letter dated July 1, Brid Jordan, deputy head of the legal department of Times Newspapers Ltd. (TNL), told the Hughes Inquiry her media group “opposes the blanket anonymization of categories of individuals. TNL is particularly concerned that the restrictions are requested to be indefinite with no periodic review of necessity or appropriateness. The restrictions sought have the potential to stifle reporting of a significant inquiry and, as proposed, represent a disproportionate restriction on the fundamental principle of open justice.”

At the close of the letter, Jordan’s name has been kept secret by the Inquiry; the evidence of this is not quite erased.   

The state media corporation and the London press group owned by Rupert Murdoch have led the British government’s efforts to accuse the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, and President Vladimir Putin personally, of launching the Novichok chemical warfare weapon against British targets.

The BBC’s dramatized retelling of the Russian cause of Sturgess’s death, titled “The Salisbury Poisonings” was broadcast in June 2020.  This followed fabrication of evidence in interviews and a book released by a BBC correspondent and MI6 informant, Mark Urban.  

The BBC and the Murdoch media have refused to interview the Skripals for their account of what allegedly happened to them in Salisbury on March 4, 2018. They have also failed to report or investigate the announcement, which Dawn Sturgess’s family made public through their lawyer on July 15, that they suspect British officials, prosecutors,  and police of fabricating the Novichok story.

by Editor - Sunday, July 24th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It’s unlikely that when they were alive, Sergei Skripal (lead image, left) and his daughter Yulia Skripal (right) read Enid Blyton.

The paratroop and military intelligence training which Sergei Skripal received prepared him for Afghanistan, Malta, and Spain.  By the time he reached England in 2010, he wasn’t undercover, and didn’t need to pretend to having read the Blyton books as a boy. By then too Blyton had been dead for more than forty years, and her books condemned in fashionable English circles as sexist, racist, paedophilic, and sadistic; although Blyton’s prejudice against foreigners has returned to fashion recently. Her taste for playing tennis in the nude did not suit the Skripals or the retired policemen neighbours in their Salisbury block.     

Blyton’s books weren’t translated and published in Russian until after Boris Yeltsin became president. The first of her Secret Seven series didn’t appear in Russian until 2015.  By then Sergei was 64 years of age; Yulia was 31.  

In March of this year, the first of the seven Skripal secrets began to slip into the public prints when Adam Chapman (lead image, centre), a lawyer who was on sabbatical from his London office at the time, was appointed by the British government to represent the two Skripals as their legal representative. The official announcement of his appointment appeared on April 4.   For the first time since March 4, 2018, when the front door-handle of their cottage was attacked, and Skripal and his daughter collapsed in the middle of Salisbury town four hours later, it appeared they had recovered their voice and their freewill.

Except that Chapman refuses to speak for the Skripals; to acknowledge that he has been instructed by them to be their lawyer and that he has seen for himself that they are alive.

On July 15, in Chapman’s first public appearance in a London courtroom on behalf of the Skripals, he was asked a question by Lord Anthony Hughes, the judge chairing the public inquiry into the alleged Novichok attacks by Skripal’s former military service. Did he have anything to say to the court for Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Chapman was asked. “Nothing”, Chapman replied, shrugging his head. That was the second of the seven Skripal secrets to slip out.

by Editor - Thursday, July 21st, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

On Friday, July 15, in London, a session took place of the British government’s public inquiry into the story of the Novichok attacks of 2018. This followed the first public session on March 25 and a closed-door session on April 4.

However, the sound and video recording system failed. The presiding chairman, former judge Lord Anthony Hughes, had no microphone and was both inaudible and invisible to the camera for more than two hours of the proceedings. Microphones at the tables of the lawyers in the courtroom, including those of the inquiry itself, the government, and the police, did not work.  A single microphone had to be moved by a court clerk between speakers, but this failed to catch everything that was said. The stenographer contracted to transcribe the session was not in the courtroom; dependent on the audio and video feed, she was unable to transcribe what was said.

A spokesman for Hughes told the press “the stenographer was listening remotely and this has resulted in a delay with the transcript. I hope it will be published early next week.” Following the failure of the transcript to appear this week, the spokesman conceded “we are hoping to publish the transcript as soon as possible.” She was requested to say when the transcript and the texts of the  presentations the lawyers had prepared in advance would appear. She replied: “we are aiming to publish the transcript and submissions together as soon as possible.” 

The result is that the two most important revelations in what was said in court have not been recorded officially. They have also not been reported by the handful of media reporters who listed themselves at the hearing; the  BBC  and Salisbury Journal  reports omitted them. The two dramatic disclosures were however recorded by hand, by me.

In the first, Michael Mansfield QC, said that   a “jigsaw of intelligence” had been the evidence  when British government officials announced the Novichok story and then charged Russian agents with the Novichok attacks. If the evidence had been good enough for public statements by Prime Minister Theresa May,  her Cabinet Secretary and security advisor Sir Mark Sedwill,  and then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, then what explained the delay in releasing the evidence to his clients, the family and partner of Dawn Sturgess, the lawyer asked.  “Unless it’s an empty barrel”, Mansfield added.

In the second disclosure, Georgina Wolfe, junior counsel for the Home Office, was speaking in court for the government, including the prime ministry and the two security services, MI6 and MI5. She explained there was an ongoing threat to British lives of Russian attack. Her evidence for this, she added, included “the Danish investigation of the MH17 attack”. Wolfe was referring to the Dutch investigation and the ongoing court trial in The Netherlands of the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over the Ukraine in July 2014.  

The truth of what caused the death of Dawn Sturgess and of the Novichok story is not what Mansfield’s and Wolfe’s statements in court last Friday meant. Mansfield wants a multi-million pound payment for his clients and himself, and is prepared to accuse the government of lying. Wolfe wants the government to get away with the lying under cover of secrecy, backed by something misbegotten in the kingdom of Denmark.

Without an official record of what was said, the lawyers and the judge can pretend Mansfield’s and Wolfe’s revelations didn’t happen.  

by Editor - Tuesday, July 19th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The public inquiry by Lord Anthony Hughes into the British government’s narrative of Russian chemical warfare in the UK and the alleged Novichok death of Dawn Sturgess on July 8, 2018, collapsed into secrecy, mishap, and farce in a London courtroom on Friday.

The sound system failed, leaving only one microphone to be moved from one speaker to another. The judge was invisible off camera and inaudible for the entire proceeding. A court official told the press “I personally apologies [sic] for the ongoing technical issues…The Cloud video platform equipment was tested beforehand and all was thought to be well. However there have been ongoing issues with equipment today.”

A government lawyer acknowledged that the “preliminary” security check of documents in the case is requiring reviews and approvals by five unnamed government agencies, and taking five months before the documents can be released to Hughes and to the lawyers in the case. Police and intelligence service applications to the judge to keep evidence and witness identities secret will be heard in secret. A closed-door hearing for this was expected to follow the public one on Friday, but the timing of this is a state secret the judge has not revealed.  

Michael Mansfield QC, a lawyer representing the Sturgess family, said in court that four years ago, a “jigsaw of intelligence” was already available when British government officials announced the Novichok story and then charged Russian agents with the Novichok attacks. Mansfield said the delays for secrecy reviews had left the Sturgess family’s “patience [wearing] extremely thin.” He hinted that if the evidence for the Russian Novichok attack had been solid enough for public statements by Prime Minister Theresa May,  her Cabinet Secretary and security advisor Sir Mark Sedwill,  and then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson,  followed by announcement of criminal charges,  the Sturgess family was exasperated by four years of postponement in releasing the evidence to the public inquiry.

“Unless it’s an empty barrel”, Mansfield added. This is the first suggestion the Sturgess family has made publicly that they suspect government officials may have been lying.

by Editor - Sunday, July 17th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When I was ten years old, I was tall for my age and had an unusually powerful first serve for a boy.   

After observing me hit a few practice balls, a famous international tennis star turned coach told my mother that if she handed me over to him every day after school for three hours a day, every day for the next ten years, along with a cheque almost as tall as I was, he was sure he could turn me into the world champion he had been. She refused.

It wasn’t that my mother was sceptical of the promise, or of my juvenile talent at the game, or even of the price she had to pay. Her reason, she told me later, was she thought there was more to life than tennis, and that in my after-school hours I would be better occupied doing my school homework. At the time that wasn’t my choice to make. Later, when I went in for politics instead of tennis, she thought there was more to life than that too. Still, she went to Wimbledon when she could. She also kept up her own tennis game. I haven’t done either.

That is until last Sunday, when for the first time in the history of tennis, the politics met the tennis game on the centre court, and Novak Djokovic, the Serbian champion, won both. The Australian government’s abuse of emergency powers to keep Djokovic out of the country last January – quashed by one federal court judge, allowed by a panel of three – had been defeated in four sets.  Nick Kyrgios served 30 aces to Djokovic’s 15, but Djokovic won 132 points to 112. Had Kyrgios won, the Australian press, which had supported its government’s attack on Djokovic in January and Kyrgios in his Wimbledon challenge, would have claimed the double victory. Djokovic kept his eloquent silence.

This coming Sunday, July 17, will be the eighth anniversary of the downing over eastern Ukraine of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in which 298 crew and passengers on board were killed; most of them were Dutch; some Australian, Malaysian and other nationalities. The Dutch, Australian and Ukrainian governments combined at the time to plan a NATO military intervention; to tamper with the bodies and the crash evidence; and for the past two years to run a show trial, in order to make their political case that Russia was guilty in the crime. The verdict is proven; the crime is not. That’s a double-fault.

by Editor - Monday, July 11th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In wars like the present one, politics on the home front cannot be permitted to give aid and comfort to the enemy. In the US and NATO campaign, the Russian oligarchs and their businesses are targets and also weapons of the plan for regime change in the Kremlin. What role they will play personally in the future of the Russian war economy, and how their assets, cashflows, profits and investments will be managed, are bound to be closely held secrets.  

So when the aluminium oligarch Oleg Deripaska (lead images, left left, right left) and the nickel oligarch Vladimir Potanin (left right, right left) appeared to agree to announce publicly on July 4 that they are negotiating a merger of their companies Rusal and Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel) into a single national mining and metals champion, they may be telling the truth; or they may be running a disinformation operation against each other; or they may be flying a trial balloon over the Kremlin to see what President Vladimir Putin will decide.  

Potanin spoke first; he has detested Deripaska in the past. For the time being Deripaska has said nothing. The spokesmen for their companies are saying nothing on the record.

Potanin may have intended to sandbag Deripaska before the latter expected it.  Last Monday they both knew that what Potanin said would immediately boost Rusal’s share price and damage Norilsk Nickel’s, and that is what happened, making the merger proposal appear to be Deripaska’s initiative, not Potanin’s.

The last three times Deripaska tried a hostile takeover against Potanin – in 2008, 2010, and 2015 — Putin refused to allow it. That the president is the one to decide again is too obvious to be a state secret now. That the Rusal-Nornickel merger is a much greater test of the war economy plan than the Central Bank’s rouble and interest rate policies, or the government’s capital export controls is also no secret.   Whether Putin has made up his mind this time, and what he will decide remain secret. So is the fight to persuade him to say yes or no.

by Editor - Monday, July 11th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Next year it will be four hundred years since the Amboyna Massacre of March 9, 1623. The British won’t be memorializing their countrymen’s killings by the Dutch, nor the Dutch celebrating one of the last gasps of their Asian empire. They are now allies in the fabrication of reasons for killing Russians.

Remember the Amboyna Massacre! That was fighting talk in London during a decade of litigation in The Netherlands, and leading to the first Anglo-Dutch War of 1652-54. The British won that one – and also the second war of 1655-57, and the third war of 1672-74.

In the Amboyna massacre the Dutch water-boarded and then executed a group of ten British merchants on the trumped-up charge of plotting to seize the Dutch fortress on the island of Ambon, now part of Indonesia,  where today  it is called Maluku. They were beheaded, along with nine Japanese mercenaries and a Portuguese they had employed. The head of the senior English officer, Gabriel Towerson, was put on a pike for display by the Dutch . On the fiftieth anniversary, John Dryden gave Towerson the leading role in a play he put on the London stage entitled, “Amboyna, or the Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants, A Tragedy”. That was the time when British political propaganda was written by men of talent.

The real reason for the massacre was that the Dutch were trying to keep their monopoly of the nutmeg harvest on the island, making sure the British didn’t undercut their prices or their influence with the local sultans  who controlled the indigenous nutmeg plantations. In those days, nutmeg was more than the sweet spice it’s thought of today. It was a strategic commodity – and a matter of national security in Europe. That was because it was believed to be able to ward off the Black Plague.

Also, the British and Dutch were fighting for sea routes and colonial assets capable of producing much more than nutmeg. Along the way, the Dutch lost New Amsterdam (aka New York) and much more besides. The Amboyna massacre had another unintended outcome – having lost the heads of several of its best men, the British merchant holding, the East India Company, decided to exit Indonesia, and  entrench themselves in India instead. India was good for cotton textiles, chintzes, and the blue dye known as indigo. Nutmeg stayed with the Dutch, but the British stole the Ambon nutmeg  tree and replanted it in other parts of their empire.  

At the litigation stage, before the warring started, the British position was that the Dutch had no jurisdiction to put the Amboyna victims on trial for treason, let alone torture them and cut their heads off. That was judicial murder according to the British reading of the applicable Dutch and English laws and case precedents. The Dutch insisted that on their territory they had the jurisdiction to do what they did. By the time the litigation was over with acquittals of the Dutch judges who had issued the guilty verdicts and the death sentences, it didn’t matter. War did.

Fast forward to March 9, 2020. Dutch jurisdiction was decided by the US and the NATO allies for prosecuting the allegation against retired Russian army officer Oleg Pulatov  of murdering the 298 passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 by shooting the aircraft down in the Ukraine on July 17, 2014.  The trial which began two years and four months ago has hidden the identities and proceedings of the judges investigating the evidence behind the court room. The Dutch state prosecutors have accepted the trumped-up evidence of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). The promised smoking-gun evidence of US satellite photographs never materialized.  In anticipation, the guilty verdict has been as obvious as Towerson’s head on the Dutch pike.

by Editor - Thursday, July 7th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Philip Short, a journalist from the BBC, has published a new book which claims to be a biography of Vladimir Putin. It isn’t.

What it is instead is a biography of one hundred and twenty-three westerners — what they claim to know about Russia’s leader  and what for commercial motive, reason of state, or vanity they have told Short in interviews he conducted for his book. They include spies he names without their cover – John Scarlett, Richard Dearlove, Richard Bridge,  Kate Horner, Martin Nicholson, and Pablo Miller from the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6); Hans-Georg Wieck and August Hanning of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND); Jean-Francois Clair, Raymond Nart,  and Yves Bonnet  of the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST); Seppo Tiitinen of the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (SUPO); Mark Kelton, Michael Morell, Peter Clement, Michael Sulick, Michael Morgan, Paul Kolbe, and William Green of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Juri Pihl, head of the Estonian Internal Security Service, and Eerik-Niiles Kross, chief of Estonian intelligence; and several dozen other ambassadors, consuls, advisers, headquarters staff, journalists, and think-tankers.

Not one of the spies was operational in Moscow for the past twenty-one years of Putin’s terms in office.

There is a flash of originality in this book. Not a single source on which Catherine Belton’s book  on Putin relies has been interviewed by Short; in his references to Belton’s claims Short reports they “appear to be untrue”. He reaches the same conclusion about two other books about Putin, Karen Dawisha’s   and Masha Gessen’s.    “Neither book pretends to be a balanced account”, Short says.  Dawisha’s book “is marred by numerous errors of fact”. “All three”, Short warns, “set out the case for the prosecution, and like all prosecutors, the authors select their evidence accordingly.” 

by Editor - Monday, July 4th, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

There is a right way and a wrong way to understand how the war against the West is being fought on the Russian home front.

The wrong way is to read the Anglo-American media, their stay-behind correspondents in Moscow, and their aggregators in Washington, DC.  

The right way is to take a Russian beer. I mean, take the Russian beer business as an illustration of how the fightback is being fought – and how effectively.

by Editor - Friday, July 1st, 2022
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Poles have always had a serious problem with their neighbours.  

They have the Germans on their western flank, the Russians on their eastern flank, and inside their borders there used to be the Jews, but now there are the Ukrainians. In September 1939 there were about 3.3 million Polish Jews.    Since February 24 of this year, the Ukrainians in Poland have come to the same number.   

The war which the Polish government and military have been fighting against Russia is proving to be almost worthless politically to Law and Justice (PiS), the ruling party in Warsaw; and also to the Civic Platform (PO) and its allies, the principal opposition coalition (KO).  The PiS was 15 percentage points ahead of the KO in the voter polls a year ago, 35% to 20%; the margin between them now is 11 points, 38% to 27%.  The gains for each are close to the margin for statistical error.

Economically, the war is costing much more in public outlays for the refugees than the value of US and NATO arms flows and related war income. By the time Warsaw pays for its new US weapons, it will owe more than when the war started; and there is still no relief from the European Union funding freeze and penalties.   

What’s to be done, the Poles ask themselves – and who’s to blame when they realise the answer is something between not much and nothing.

by Editor - Wednesday, June 29th, 2022
No Comments »